A prominent Vietnamese blogger known as “Mother Mushroom” yesterday went on trial for anti-state propaganda, a court clerk said, as rights groups decried the charges as “outrageous” and demanded her immediate release.
Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, whose pen name derives from her daughter’s nickname “mushroom,” was arrested in October last year for critical Facebook posts about politics and the environment.
Vietnam’s one-party state keeps a tight clamp on dissent and routinely jails activists, bloggers and lawyers who speak out against the communist regime.
A court clerk, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, confirmed Quynh’s trial started yesterday morning.
Quynh’s mother, who was allowed to briefly see her daughter on Wednesday for the first time since she was detained, said she has little hope for a not-guilty verdict.
“My daughter has done nothing wrong, but they have been so brutal and repressive,” Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan said.
Reporters were banned from attending the trial in Khanh Hoa Province and photographs on Facebook showed the courthouse heavily guarded by police.
Quynh was a vocal critic of Vietnam’s human rights record, civilian deaths in police custody and the government’s handling of a toxic leak that killed tonnes of fish last year.
She was arrested in the city of Nha Trang on Oct. 10 last year as she was visiting a fellow activist in prison.
She was charged under Article 88 of Vietnam’s criminal code and held incommunicado with no access to lawyers until June 20, her attorney Nguyen Kha Thanh said.
New York-based Human Rights Watch urged authorities to release the 37-year-old blogger this week, calling the trial “outrageous.”
“The scandal here is not what Mother Mushroom said, but Hanoi’s stubborn refusal to repeal draconian, rights-abusing laws that punish peaceful dissent and tarnish Vietnam’s international reputation,” Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said in a statement on Wednesday.
The US, Britain and the EU have all called for Quynh’s release.
She in March received an International Woman of Courage Award from the US Department of State, which Vietnam said was “not appropriate and of no benefit for the development of relations between the two countries.”
In 2015, Quynh was named Civil Rights Defender of the Year by a Sweden-based international advocacy group.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS